Writing and What Have You by Robert Nathan

Style No. 55: Reactionary

It’s these damn kids, I’m telling you. I don’t know if it’s because their hippie parents smoked too much hash at their Marxist sit-ins when they were young, but now their wretched spawn are running around causing havoc like chickens with their heads cut off. Just today I spotted one of them blowing a whistle right in the street. Wasn’t like that in my day, let me tell you. I nearly blew a vein in my forehead when I saw that. Never mind my ears nearly falling off.

I’d say the government should do something about it, but we all know what those namby-pambies are worth. The state of society today!

I suppose I should take comfort in the fact that around the same time I happened upon a serious and respectable woman who still had the decency to hide her private business beneath a shawl on her head. Not like these young rouges roving as though they were wild beasts in heat, blowing their whistles and wantonly eyeing distant crowds. The atrocity!

And their public displays of affection — ghastly. I forgot to mention that. Yes, the whistling miscreant had a companion who was openly holding him with his arm, as though he took the street for the interior of a private residence.

You can imagine how scandalized I was, observing all of this from behind. I resolved then and there to report those rascals to the district officer posthaste. Then, not being able to withstand it any longer, and with resolve matched only by my disgust, I looked the other way.